The "Battle for Hill 178" should not have been released in its current form.

The Actions 3 card is not displayed on a right click (Allied Airstrikes and Blitx rules) and the scenario notes barely mention it.

This makes a huge difference in playability for any player who is not aware of this rule.

As a minumum the introductory notes should explain this rule in the absence on a card being displayed in the game.

By posting I am giving you all a heads up on the issue.

The scenario plays but with hidden rules. Not good enough.

Hmmmm, don't you think this is a bit extreme?

1) The scenario notes are the same as they would be for any other scenario that is available online.
2) There is a reference to a page number (although it is not clear which book initially).
3) Adding more details to the scenarios notes is a relatively minor correction that could be easily repaired.

Considering the generosity of DoW and their willingness to let fans help to get these online, a milder and more considered approach to fixing this issue would seem to be appropriate. Perhaps a PM to DoW would have been a more diplomatic way to address the issue.

Personally, I find your first statement in bold and "Not good enough" offensive. I put a lot of time into this project, as did many others. Considering the number of things that needed to get done to prepare these scenarios, forgetting to add details where appropriate is a rather minor issue -- certainly not worthy of the treatment you've provided.

I just can't believe that having scenarios where you need to search a bit to understand the rules is worse than not having them at all...

Hill 178 is in my opinion one of the good official scenario's that have been released. Although I understand Phreads critical approach: we really would like this product to be the best that it can be; I do have to agree with Geoff that there might be other ways to get this fixed. I do not agree with Geoff on the generosity argument. In my opinion DOW needs to keep investing in this product to keep its customers happy. And in my opinion that means untill it equals the quality of the boardgame and its expansions; investing in the product untill all the rules of the boardgame and its expansions are available online and working correctly. Publishing scenarios that can be made using the expert mode should not be the main objective for DOW. I think that the main objective should be to implement the rules of the game in a way that scenarios can be created by the community with all appropriate rules enforced. Although I appreciate the work of the people involved in putting new scenarios online and the work of the people that have created the scenarios in the first place, I still think that DOW falls short on this. Nevertheless, I wish to thank all people involved in creating and maitaining this product and is community, because I like it and I like the people in the community.

Just to be sure everybody understands, these added official scenarios were an initiative that came from gheintze -- separate from whatever plans DoW has for expanding Memoir Online.

Over the past few months, we've all heard people bemoan the fact that DoW hadn't posted any new scenarios in a long time. Geoff actually took the initiative to do something constructive about it. He researched what official scenarios could be added with existing programming, contacted DoW, and made it as easy as possible for them to give the community this unscheduled add-on.

I'm sure that DoW intends to add more features, more scenarios, and more promotions, but we don't know where it fits in their schedule or what other priorities it's competing against.

There's no need for anybody to complain or argue about the fact that we all just got a nice gift, just because it would have been better to get a nicer one.

By generosity, I was referring to the annual Christmas gifts for M'44 fans; the pins they sent to beta-testers; and other such examples. These are things that don't need be done, and many other companies don't even release free items on their website.

I think we need to trust that DoW is doing the best that they can to support all of their game lines and remain successful. Of course, we (and I'm sure DoW, as well) would like unlimited support for M'44 Online, but in this economy, I'm sure that money and resources are tight. We'll just need to be patient, help out the best we can, and let DoW take care of their business.

Considering the support that other companies provide for their products (Tide of Iron and BattleLore come to mind), I think that we are very lucky with what we have -- the M'44 community is amazing -- and by continuing to be positive, I'm sure that more good things are to come.

Geoff I did not intend to offend you, I acknowledge and appreciate your work.
I did not know that these scenarios were your - not DoW's - initiative. That makes me more grateful to you for your efforts.

However when one right clicks the map in this scenario the additional card is not displayed.

If I was playing this face-to-face then I would have the rule cards out. I do not expect to have to find them (online or printed) for an online scenario. This disappointed, annoyed and frustrated me. It makes this implementation - no offence intended - less than most of the others imho.

So, other players, please check the rule section in the notes and look up any you are not familiar with.

However when one right clicks the map in this scenario the additional card is not displayed.

If I was playing this face-to-face then I would have the rule cards out. I do not expect to have to find them (online or printed) for an online scenario. This disappointed, annoyed and frustrated me. It makes this implementation - no offence intended - less than most of the others imho.

Adding the card online would have required programming, which was outside the scope of the project. It would have been simple enough for me to add the rules to the scenario description; however, this escaped my notice. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause as a result of my oversight.

Unfortunately, all I'm learning from your continued posts is that you can't please everyone and that maybe it's not worth the trouble for me to take on these projects if the "implementation [is] less than most of the others" and "not good enough".

As you note you got no support (reprogramming or editor support) to allow these scenarios to match the prior existing standard scenarios. That is what I deem unfortunate.

This is ridiculous. I had plenty of support from DoW (and never implied otherwise), without which I'd have been unable to accomplish this project at all. It's only with their permission that this was able to take place, and I'm very grateful to them for allowing me to take this on -- I only wish that others would also be grateful to DoW.

At this point, I'm going to choose to believe that most of the community will enjoy and be grateful for "Battle for Hill 178" as well as appreciate the spirit in which it was provided (both by me and Dow), in spite of the apparently "substandard presentation".

Thus, I'm done defending myself and DoW from unfair and uninformed accusations when we all only had the best intentions.

Yikes! One lousy card that's not there, BUT is noted in the description, and it's a substandard presentation. Does everything have to be given to us? Can't we look up anything? Playing the online game is much easier than the board game. It's ALL there for you, no fishing out cards(oops 1 card), or rules, and no arguments on movements and attacks. It can't get any better! This may be the perfect game design for online play.

Geoff, I didn't realize that you did this on your own. There sure had to be a lot of time spent to get all these scenarios in working order. Thank you.

I'd just like to add one last thing. By criticizing DoW for their "assumed" lack of support -- which is very far from the truth -- we, as a community, are potentially discouraging them from allowing such projects to happen again.

To dispel any such myths, I feel compelled to share more details about the process.

I approached DoW a few months ago and asked if there was anyway that I could help to get new scenarios that would require no further programming or rules implementations into the official scenarios list of DoW online. I knew going in that no further rules would be added, which was fine. I was looking for an easy way to help out.

After receiving their encouragement and permission to proceed, I went through all the official scenarios to see which ones could be implemented. DoW gave me access to the scenarios we thought would work (the basic structure was already in the editor from the sftf area of the boardgame website), and I edited them to make sure that all the rules for the online game were activated, checked that the units were in the right place, adjusted some to the winter board, etc...

At this point, I tested all of the scenarios against johnny to make sure the medals worked and that all of the units were labeled correctly (and some of those medals were pretty hard to capture -- Strasbourg, this means you). Then, a group of playtesters helped me to play several matches in two players mode to see if anything was not functioning correctly.

After this, I let DoW know that I thought they were ready; at which point, they did some QA and prepared the final versions for upload.

So, this project was not done in a vacuum without DoW support. All groups were fully involved. This was just an opportunity to quickly get scenarios uploaded in a manner that would require as little resources as possible.

Everyone should be thankful for the opportunity to play these (and should thank Jdrommel as well for the amazing scenarios of his that were implemented).

On this note, I hope that this controversy can be put to rest. I'm sure that DoW has more great things in store for both M'44 online and the boardgame. We just all need to be patient.

They are in the official/unclassified section, and were published in classified Air Pack versions.

I think you said something about needing permissions??

I've been posting them in my SFTF along with Po Valley, which I call Italy: The Gothic Line, (because that's what the first version I played was called; also someone posted their own Po Valley), Crucifix Hill, and Alpha Yellow. These have a problem: The bunkers on the hills don't block line of sight when empty. This can also occur in First Assault (I got it to happen vs Johnny), but that situation comes up very infrequently; it's more likely in these scenarios.

There is a reason I found today not to have released Battle for Hill 178.

There's a cheat that allows you to play a Recon as an Air Strike for the wrong section.

I'd read about it before, but only tested it today.

So Red Barricades Factory, Counter-attack at Mortain and anything else with Air Strikes or Blitz still needs to be fixed. One fix would be for the program to check if one unit in the correct section is still ordered when you press OK. If not it should NOT continue and have a popup box appear saying you haven't played correctly, which after acknowledging throws you back into the Order phase.

When I first started playing Online, Air Strikes didn't work correctly against units in sandbags, churches, fortresses, etc. (anything that could ignore a normal retreat). I believe they fixed it sometime between Nov'11-Jan'12.

It sounds like the real "ask" here is for DOW to fix that bug (and others) -- not to un-release Hill 178, Mortain, Red Barricades, and others.

Sadly, I don't believe Memoir fixes are going to happen anytime soon. I heard at a tournament there are people who play face-to-face who won't play Online anymore because this cheat was used against them.

I was outraged when I lost a game because someone chose not to attack, because of the cheat where your opponent sees you have Ambush when you have it set to Manual. I've since set mine to Automatic, advised people on Manual, and just taken their Ambush. If you played face-to-face and someone knocked over their Ambush card would you no longer attack Close?

If you played face-to-face and someone knocked over their Ambush card would you no longer attack Close?

If you happen to see a card like Ambush in a FtF game (because it got knocked over or the person started to play it and then thought better of it) you would certianly take that into consideration!! You might try not to, but you now have important information and a player would use that, unless you made a large effort not to.

I almost play exclusively with people on my buddy list. It's a big enough list now where I don't have to worry about cheats. These guys are all honorable and make the game very enjoyable. I can see how people using cheats would make it very frustrating. So, my advice is to gather a large enough list of fellow like minded players and stick with them.